Hot and fresh, straight from the side of the frying table to your plate, is this week’s Scrapple! What’s tasteless, flavorless, and has absolutely zero visual appeal, yet still has an effect on your stomach goes here! Get the hot sauce ready, because this dish is served fresh…

1. What makes Elon Musk tick? “Obsession”, says his ex-wife.

Justine Musk, who was married to Tesla/SpaceX/former PayPal mogul Elon Musk from 2000-2008, was digging through Quora, a question-and-answer site, when one particular question popped up: ““How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson?” After mulling it over, she answered: ““Extreme success is different from what I suppose you could just consider ‘success.’ These people tend to be freaks and misfits who were forced to experience the world in an unusually challenging way. Other people consider them to be somewhat insane.”

While it seems like she was using her experience with Elon to answer the question, the answer was significantly more drawn out and explained it in greater detail. You can see the entire response on Quora HERE. But one question stands: how did Elon take her response after this story came out in the New York Times? As they reported, he sent Justine an email: “Well said.”

2. De Tomaso is now owned by the Chinese…for the moment…

As far as we’re concerned, call this brand dead. De Tomaso, the formerly Italian brand that made the Mangusta and Pantera, is now in the hands of Chinese-owned Consolidated Ideal TeamVenture after Swiss buyer L3 Holdings fell through on financial obligations. According to reports, TeamVenture acquired De Tomaso for somewhere around $1.1 million dollars (really?!) and plan to use the name for vehicles sold in China. Now, here’s where we are seeing the worst: Consolidated Ideal TeamVenture is technically a Hong Kong group, but “has legal status” in the Virgin Islands. For those who are more in-tuned with the details of business legalities, feel free to clear up misconceptions, but from my office, that sounds awfully shady.

3. Volkswagen and the fall of the Piëch

Here’s how this one played out: Ferdinand Piëch, the grandson of Ferdinand Porsche, attempted some sort of coup d’etat within the Volkswagen group that involved the public disapproval of Volkswagen AG chief executive Martin Winterkorn. Piëch has been famous in the automotive realm for firing people under him at a relatively stunning pace, but when he tried to pull the same stunt on Winterkorn, five other members of the board rebuffed him and basically told him to either publicly support Winterkorn or to GTFO. And that he did, vacating his postiton along with his wife, Ursula. Additionally, he has come out and publicly said that he does not want to see his nieces (Julia Kuhn-Piëch and Dr. Louise Kiesling) appointed to the two vacant chairs that he and his wife left behind. Confused yet? It gets better…Piëch still has a decent ownership stake in the company, so unless he sells it off, he could sit in the background and utilize that power as influence. Autoblog has been watching that situation very carefully, so if you want all the details, check them out.

I wonder how that new Bugatti is coming, now that I think about it…

4. Bugatti’s new car (“Chiron”?) is expected to clock 0-62 in two seconds and return 14 MPG.

If you say so…

5. You’ll get an Aston Martin SUV first.

Photo: Aston Martin

Meet the DBX Concept. While a lot of the media seems to focus on it preluding a sport-utility from Aston Martin, honestly, it looks like A-M’s take on a rally raid car. Bring it on, and it better be packing  that V12 up front. Mr. Bond, you WRC car has arrived.